


To Be A Spirit Warrior

by ushauz



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: A Mention of Lord Woolsley, F/F, Ferelden, Spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 18:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15935564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ushauz/pseuds/ushauz
Summary: 'Although spirit warriors employ magical abilities, they are not mages; instead, they flirt with inhabitants of the Fade who agree to augment mortal abilities in exchange for a glimpse of the physical world. Naturally, the Chantry's Templars rarely acknowledge that distinction.'In which a simple farmsdwarf just wants superpowers to fight off these new blasted vermins that keep eating her cousins and getting into the chicken coop.





	To Be A Spirit Warrior

_ 'Although spirit warriors employ magical abilities, they are not mages; instead, they flirt with inhabitants of the Fade who agree to augment mortal abilities in exchange for a glimpse of the physical world. Naturally, the Chantry's Templars rarely acknowledge that distinction.' _

Eilin figured this was supposed to be a kind of warning. It was, after all, in the section on the evils of darkest magicks as best as she could figure, a few pages past the section on all the terrible things you could do with blood magic and neatly next to a footnote about abominations.

It was a curiosity because according to the text, anyone could do it. Not just mages, and that intrigued Eilin. There sure were a lot of demons about these days, and the Chantry had scuttered back to Orlais. At least for the most part. There was one stubborn Chantry Mother who apparently got dyslexia any time a letter came to her from her higher-ups she didn’t like, and that made her okay in Eilin’s book.

Not this book, but another book. She was pretty sure the good Chantry Mother would still throw a fit if she saw precious, darling Eilin with it, even if it was more of precautionary tales and grisly stories. Eilin was simply too precious for the world, she’d say and snatch away the book, and Eilin would have to steal it back. And Eilin didn’t like stealing. She would if she had to, but she’d feel kinda bad about it, so best the good Chantry Mother just never saw her with the book in the first place.

Now fighting skills were hard to come by. That was the sort of business that required a teacher and also free time on your hands. That time could be used for weeding, baling hay, or scaring off the latest pack of Blighted vermins that came sniffing around the chicken coop, and those had to be killed careful-like ever since cousin Eddie got bit by one and had to eventually be put down himself afore he could infect the entire village with the Blight. But Eilin had batted her eyelashes at a strapping soldier-type a while ago and squeezed some sword drills out of him. It still wasn’t perfect as there wasn’t a trainer to correct her stances, and practicing something badly was worse than never practicing at all when it came to such violent business, but she was able to continue to find an occasional trainer to help her for as long as said person resided in the local tavern. Archery was easier to practice, both as something that didn’t require as much of a direct person to train her, and also for combat. Training dummies didn’t fight back, and they also didn’t have ankles. Eilin loved going for the ankles. All heights were made equal when she slashed through the ankle tendon. And then there was kneecapping. That was also great fun.

Sure though, even for archery, live people wouldn't be still targets, but the idea was to fire off some arrows while whatever charged towards her, and then after a certain distance drop the bow and draw the sword and have at thee.

See, thing was she knew how to deal with Blighted vermins, but a demon got into one of the neighbor’s goats a while back, and not a polite demon like Lord Woolsley who the most he got fervent about was apple time and about the destruction of the old occupation of Orlesian forces, but a real nasty demon that did in cousin Roderick and five cattle. And then another time, a slew of armored men calling themselves Templars (but it’s hard to check for legitimacy there) ‘commandeered’ some of their food stockpile. And then a different time, a bonafide werewolf took a dislike to cousin Paula, and then once they finally did in the werewolf, she had to shoot Paula as well who was in the process of eating cousin Rolaf.

They didn’t have no problems with Orlesians though. Lord Woolsley was very vigilant about the destruction of Orlesian forces, even if he didn’t seem to fully understand that the occupation had been over for a while now. Then again, he could see the future, so maybe he was getting events confused with Orlais eventually invading again, and according to cousin Lace, one of the two main contenders of the Orlesian throne was all about invading Ferelden.

But see that was exactly the sort of business that caused her to go reading about in these kinds of texts. You needed all the help you could get these days, and according to her grandma about the olden days way back before the Orlesian bastards showed up, Ferelden used to be a bit more respectful of spirits. Used to be more respectful of wolves too. And since these were things that the Orlesian bastards tried to stamp out of the community, Grandma squirreled them all away for safekeeping.

But she did squirrel them away, as in, stashed a whole bunch of stories that may or may not be true, and now that the Orlesians were gone, she couldn’t quite figure out where she had buried all her stories and just dug around and hoped for the best.

Which of course led to today, to Eilin reading through the evils of the darkest magicks, and well, apparently this was one story Grandma remembered correctly.

There was nothing else for it, she figured. This was one of those situations where you would simply have to pull your skirts above the average mud depth and get to it. Chickens weren’t going to defend themselves.

—

Eilin had to ask Lord Woolsley on how to go about things and then of course paid him the required tribute of fresh apples. Lord Woolsley knew what he was about, and that was apples and the blood of invading Orlesian forces.

The first step was finding an area that fit the feel of the type of spirit she was trying to summon, which was Valor since she wanted to fight. Seemed pretty straightforward, and these days it was harder finding land that hadn’t been some battlefield than land that wasn’t, and she knew that for a fact. Then she had to pile rocks into a table of sorts, which weren’t hard either since aside from mud, Ferelden’s main export was rocks. And the third was the sacrifice of a living animal, the blood to run off the altar, to hit the ground as she ‘entreated’ the spirit to take the offering and appear to her.

Eilin unsheathed her knife. Well. They were going to have chicken to eat tonight, she supposed.

When the blood hit the ground, the spirit sprung up, unfolding like a flower blossoming, until in front of her was more or less an armored person, visage obscured with a heavy visor, and sword in hand.

“I am Valor,” the spirit spoke, voice ringing out and causing a few birds to startle into flight. “Who are you to summon me?”

Valor sounded feminine. Maybe Eilin had summoned a female Valor spirit, but she didn't want to make assumptions here. Valor was also tall and built like a brick house. Normally Eilin had urges to kneecap such tall people, but in this case, she instead wanted to climb this spirit like a tree.

So far so good. And here she thought she might have to have multiple chicken dinners in order to find one that piqued her interest.

Eilin drew in a deep breath. She had this.

She glanced downward before looking upward through her eyelashes. She was almost always craning her neck upwards to look at people, but this was for that special angle. “Just a girl in need of a big, strong spirit like yourself. And my, what muscles on  _ you.” _

“…what.”

“I’ve bet you’ve won all sorts of fights,” she continued. “And can easily demolish your enemies.”

Eilin didn’t know someone whose face was completely obscured could look like they were feeling confused, but this spirit was managing it. “What are you doing?”

“Flirting,” she said. “Best as I can, anyway, not sure how they flirt up there in spiritland. The Fade. Whatever it is. I’m a dwarf, so I’ve never visited.”

“Oh so that’s what a dwarf looks like,” Valor said. “I have never met a dwarf before. Obviously. Um. Are you…” Eilin couldn’t tell, but it seemed like the spirit was squinting. “…lonely?”

Eilin frowned before showing the book to the spirit. “See? Says here you have to flirt with spirits for supernatural powers.”

“Ohhhhh,” Valor said. “Well. I think that’s over the in the Avvar region. It’s a far ways away.”

“You mean up in those mountains? That’s almost spitting distance,” she said with a frown.

Valor shrugged. “It’s far ways away where I am from, though that does look close from here. I’m not entirely sure why that is. Regardless, I apologize, but I do not know the process you are looking for.”

“Well darn,” Eilin said, and stroked her chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. You don’t know how this works, and neither do I, but the book is clear. And I need these powers to fight off strange vermins getting into the chicken coop and eating all my cousins.”

“That is bad,” Valor agreed. “Have you considered a preemptive strike at the sources of these attacks?”

“Well that’s a bit forward thinking for me,” Eilin said. “First things first and all, which is defending my land and my extended family and my livestock, which’ll be hard enough on its own. Not that I might not down the line as there is wisdom in ‘preemptive strikes’, but I have to sort out my business first you understand.”

“I am…” Valor paused for a second. “…merely wondering how long this relationship between us would last should I figure out how to grant you my blessing.”

Eilin nodded knowingly. “If it’ll be a short-term or a long-term thing. I understand. It’s still a bit early on to tell though. I think the best approach there is to just let things take us as it all progresses, you know? We just met after all.”

They both stood there in silence for a bit then, blood still dripping off the table.

“I still have no idea how to give you powers,” Valor said regretfully.

“Maybe we just need to flirt some more?”

Valor eyed her over. “Well. It can’t hurt, anyway.”

“Exactly. Can’t hurt,” Eilin agreed. “At the very least, we should give it a try before giving up, you know?”

“Maybe it’s one of those kissing things,” Valor volunteered. “I’ve heard in plenty of stories that curses are broken or powers bestowed with a kiss.”

“How good of a kiss?” Eilin asked. “A short ‘un? A long ‘un? Perhaps it’s best if we do kiss for powers, that we don’t risk it. Make a nice, long kiss.”

“Yes, I do feel that would be satisfactory,” Valor said.

They then made out for several hours over the blood-soaked altar. As it turned out, kissing a Valor spirit could give you superpowers, but they both best figured it was safest to ‘recharge’ these powers through future kisses. Just in case.


End file.
